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Are Drones That Much Of A Threat To Aircraft Safety?

While there are a lot of ongoing questions about how growing use of drones will affect our airspace and the FAA is attempting to confront and regulate their use in a prompt manner, are they really that much of a treat to the safety of aircraft in flight? According to some sources, smaller drones are less of a threat to aircraft than the many birds that fly among them every day. Though bird strikes can be a serious air safety issue, most drones, specially those that are smaller in size and weight, don’t compare in terms of potential interference with most aircraft.

“What’s more, if you only consider small- and medium-size bird strikes that occurred in places where microdrones would be likely allowed (below 400 feet altitude and more than 5 miles from an airport), the results don’t look at all alarming: the Exponent report says there have been zero fatalities and at most a handful of accidents with injuries. This is all to say that drones of about a kilogram or so in mass would likely pose little danger, so long as people flew them away from where full-size aircraft are allowed to fly.”

Do you think we still need impose restrictions on drone flight, even if aircraft safety doesn’t appear to be a major issue? Weigh in on this topic by leaving a comment.